The Trump administration is reportedly sending armed and extremely skilled legislation enforcement items to sanctuary cities throughout the nati
The Trump administration is reportedly sending armed and extremely skilled legislation enforcement items to sanctuary cities throughout the nation to assist US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in finishing up immigration raids.
As first reported by the New York Times, 100 US Customs and Border Safety officers, together with these from the SWAT-like Border Patrol Tactical Unit, will likely be deployed from February by Could throughout 9 sanctuary cities: Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, and Newark, NJ.
Border Patrol Tactical Unit brokers obtain particular coaching for high-risk legislation enforcement actions, together with sniper certification and different superior weapons coaching. Their major cost has been monitoring down drug traffickers on the US-Mexico border, the place violence can typically get away, however now they may even be chargeable for conducting routine immigration arrests in a few of America’s largest cities, in response to the Instances.
It’s simply the most recent occasion through which President Donald Trump has sought to focus on sanctuary cities — which don’t enable native legislation enforcement to share data with ICE or hand over immigrants of their custody — for refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Immigrants advocates say that the deployment is just not solely a waste of federal legislation enforcement assets, it additionally would possibly endanger immigrant communities.
“That is clear retaliation towards native governments for refusing to do the administration’s bidding,” Naureen Shah, senior coverage and advocacy counsel on immigrants’ rights for the American Civil Liberties Union, mentioned in a press release. “It should put lives in danger by additional militarizing our streets.”
Division of Homeland Safety spokesperson Heather Swift mentioned in a press release Friday that the extra CBP brokers (which she emphasised come from a range backgrounds and never simply tactical items) will assist overstretched ICE officers cope with the rising variety of immigrants who may very well be arrested on immigration violations however have but to be detained.
“ICE doesn’t have enough assets to successfully handle the sustained improve in non-detained instances which is exacerbated by the rise of sanctuary jurisdictions,” she mentioned. “These officers have additionally been skilled in routine immigration enforcement actions, which is what they’ve been requested to do.”
It’s all a part of Trump’s marketing campaign towards sanctuary cities
Friday’s choice is only one in an extended line of Trump’s makes an attempt to crack down on sanctuary cities. The administration has tried to withhold federal law enforcement grants from sanctuary states and vacate California’s sanctuary legal guidelines (but has mostly failed). And it not too long ago blocked New Yorkers from enrolling in International Entry and different applications that provide quicker processing for pre-vetted vacationers in response to new state sanctuary legal guidelines.
At his State of the Union tackle earlier this month, Trump characterised sanctuary cities as a hazard to public security and broadly painted immigrants as violent criminals, highlighting a case of an immigrant arrested on costs of murdering and sexually assaulting a 92-year-old lady in New York Metropolis.
Trump has carried out this time and again throughout his time in workplace, turning his ire on worldwide felony gangs like MS-13 and invoking the stories of “angel moms,” dad and mom of these killed by gang members.
However in actuality, analysis means that his characterization doesn’t maintain water: Sanctuary insurance policies don’t seem to make a metropolis extra harmful. Whereas there isn’t an enormous physique of analysis on sanctuary insurance policies’ influence on crime charges, research have discovered that they both barely lower crime charges or haven’t any impact.
A study printed within the journal City Affairs Overview in 2017 discovered that cities with comparable traits however for his or her sanctuary insurance policies had “no statistically discernible distinction” of their charges of violent crime, rape, or property crime. Utilizing information from the Nationwide Immigration Regulation Middle and the FBI, researchers in contrast crime charges earlier than and after cities handed sanctuary legal guidelines, discovering that they’d no impact on crime.
One other study by the Middle for American Progress, a left-leaning assume tank, examined the just about 2,500 counties that don’t settle for requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain unauthorized immigrants. The research discovered that counties with sanctuary insurance policies are likely to have decrease crime charges than people who don’t: about 35.5 fewer crimes per 10,000 individuals on common. The counties with the smallest populations exhibited even greater variations in crime charges.
Many police chiefs say there’s good cause behind these outcomes: Sanctuary insurance policies facilitate higher crime reporting and cooperation with legislation enforcement in felony investigations.